Monday, July 07, 2008

Lucky and the Old Testement

Lucky and the Old Testament - 2008-07-07 06:08

Lucky the Dog

Lucky was an Old Testament dog. For him Deuteronomy wasn’t just a book in the bible—it
was his job.

He was a dog of sorrows, doomed to
internal suffering as he wandered the earth with thorns in his ears, always watched
over by a punishing god eager to correct slights with massive retributions.

And, as it turned out, he was
pretty sure that I was that God.

We picked up Lucky at the SPCA
shortly before Christmas. My girls had been fighting for a pet and I had given
in to them at last. The name on the cage was Tito, and he was a baby
Terrier-Schnauzer mix. He snarled and whimpered at the same time, and wallowed
in poop as he fought being taken out of the cage.

My kids fell in love with him on
sight, though I had some reservations. We changed his name before we left the
pound.

He was skittish and high-strung
when we got him home, and he clearly had an attention problem—not a deficit so
much as confusion. He was able to focus, but with an inability to aim that
focus.

Except when he saw me.

He only looked at me from the
corners of his eyes, and if he saw any reaction from me his response was
immediate and unequivocal—shoulders dropped, tail between legs, head down. It
was if he knew that he was flawed to the core of his being-- that he was
helpless, and that it was hopeless, and I was the all-seeing eye of doom.

A lot of pressure on me, to be
honest.

This fear made it hard to teach him
anything. My every look made him start the cycle of punishment—no infraction
had weight, no discipline had merit.Lucky had no attachment to the arrow of time—that connection between
consequence and behavior.

He was a biblical doggy Job;
unreasonable, arbitrary things were done to him. He was a meaty puppet jerked
and animated by unseen strings. I think he used preemptive punishments as his
only way of controlling anything.

Lucky never outgrew his fear and
awe of me. He continued the rest of his life to act as if he were defective and
unworthy. His only redemption came through the act of giving and receiving
love.

He loved my girls and gave his all
to them. He was happy when with them, but only with them. He slept with my
oldest daughter every day of his life. He waited at the door, with his tail
wagging, for them to some home from school. He loved them both without any
conditions.

And they loved him as well. They
bathed him, trimmed him and cleaned up after him. They goofed off with him and
hugged him. They accepted all of his furry mental problems without any
question—they accepted him exactly the way he was.

Lucky died at seven years of age
after suffering for a day with massive rectal bleeding. His whole family, and
that’s what we were, suffered with him and comforted him as best we could. He
groaned and left us in my oldest daughter’s arms- in pain and in love.

And I think it all worked out for him exactly
the way he expected. Except for the love thing—that grace was an unexpected
gift from a God he was always afraid to look at.

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About Me

"Supreme egotism and utter seriousness are necessary for the greatest accomplishment,
and these the Irish find hard to sustain; at some point, the instinct to see life in a
comic light becomes irrestible, and ambition falls before it."
William Shannon